Be careful what you click on Facebook

This post came about as aside from my Facebook feed being saturated with post Brexit for and against posts, I noticed a number of people sharing links to an article about Will Smith’s son, Jaden. You will see from the screengrab below (name and profile picture redacted) that it has quite a clickbaity headline, by which it teases you enough to want to click through and read more.

The idea behind sites like this are normally quite malicious and will a) continue to post links to your feed (normally without your knowledge, unless someone points it out to you) and b) are probably using your Facebook data for other spurious activity.

You will have granted access to the app in one way or another, maybe playing a game or clicking a similar link. By granting access, which is usually a really quick click of a button, you will find that this type of activity will continue to happen, even if you delete the post. Below I am going to walk you through how to deactivate this and also allow you to use it as an opportunity to deactivate other apps that have access to your timeline.

First (and it is usually easier to do this on a Desktop/Laptop, than mobile device), click on the privacy shortcuts section of your Facebook options in the top right and then click on ‘see more settings’.

This will take you to the following screen and you need to select Apps on the right hand navigation, which will bring up a list of all the Apps that you are currently logged into with Facebook. If you hover over the the side of the app you will get an ‘edit’ and ‘remove’ option.

The important part once you click remove on the option is to tick the box, shown in the screengrab below, as this will remove previous posts by the app and fully revoke access moving forwards.

This process should fix your timeline from sharing any future posts from the app and stop this sort of rubbish from being shared further with your friends.

If this was helpful, please give it a share and let me know if you have any questions.